Where Boys Fear to Tread
by jei did it
Summary: The Norse gods have failed them. Their only chance now to destroy Ka Anor is to employ an assassin known as the Slayer of the Gods. Question is, will he want to help them? Better summary coming soon. -_-;
1. Zero

**Disclaimer:** Everworld and its characters belong to K. A. Applegate. Story and chapter titles are from the Smashing Pumpkins (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness).  
  
**Author's Note:** This is set a year after the events in the last book, Entertain the End. I'll be switching off the first-person narratives in the order they went in the series... Don't expect much from this first one, because David is my least favorite character. =\ I'm using songs from the Smashing Pumpkins double-CD set, "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" for chapter titles because I feel like it and they usually kinda fit well. "Where Boys Fear to Tread" is also a SP song and it'll make a lot more sense later on... The lyrics are at the bottom of the page. I'll be sticking in a few fitting lines from the chapter-title-lyrics, too.  


  


**Where Boys Fear to Tread**  
Jessica "Jei" Lee  
  
  
**Chapter One : Zero**  
_emptiness is loneliness, and loneliness is cleanliness  
and cleanliness is godliness, and god is empty just like me  
i never let on, that i was on a sinking ship  
i never let on that i was down_

  


  
( David )  
  
I crouched behind a standing stone, bloodstained sword gripped tightly in a hand that had long since gone numb, torn between running for cover and making a mad, suicidal dash at the Sennite closest to me. Eight yards or so, I could make it before he cut me down... As long as he didn't hear me coming, as long as he didn't, for whatever reason, turn enough to see me coming...  
  
The Sennites weren't the brightest crayons in the box, but they caught on pretty fast. They were firing random bursts into the trees, and it was enough. What was left of Goewynne's elves were falling from the branches like ripe fruit, if fruit poured blood from a dozen bullet wounds and tumbled screaming to the ground. Odin lay motionless some distance away, surrounded by a handful of Sennites who kept letting out wild war whoops and pumped his corpse full of bullets. I couldn't see where the others had gone.  
  
I couldn't keep hiding. I had to move. Shifting my hold on the sword so I could grip the hilt with both hands, I stepped out from behind the standing stone, blade rising. The Sennite turned. Saw me. Leered. And raised the machine gun he'd been cradling in his hands. I stood frozen in place, pitiful and helpless, a Native American looking confusedly into the barrel of the white man's musket.   
  
Then April came flying in out of nowhere; a flash of steel, the glittering arc of a sword blade on its downstroke, and suddenly the Sennite dropped his gun and both of his hands with it. He screamed, blood pumping from the stumps of his wrist, and stumbled back. April looked away, her face blank and white with the kind of shock that allowed her to function in battle nowadays. She spotted me, grabbed my arm, started to drag me away.  
  
"We have to go, David. We're losing. We have to go."  
  
I knew she was right. "Fall back," I yelled. "Fall back, retreat!" But there was no one left to hear me. And like the coward that I knew was curled tightly in the heart of my being, I ran.  
  
  
  
**Another Author's Note:** Told ya it'd be short. Bah David. The real story starts in the next chapter. And here are the lyrics, as promised.  
  


**Where Boys Fear to Tread  
by the Smashing Pumpkins  
  
**candy cane walks down  
to build a bonfire, to break my fall  
my baby, my sweet thing  
just maybe we could lose ourselves this time  
king of the horseflies, dark prince of death  
his tragic forces are heaven sent  
in sweet things, in a lovers breath  
in knowing this was meant to be the last  
a go-go-kids, a go-go-style  
a suck suck kiss, a suck suck smile  
as always, in young need  
a veiled promise to never die  
on dead highways, her black beauties roam  
for june angels, so far from home  
for a love lost, a faded picture  
to tread lightning, to in the lavender skies  
so get on the bomb  
_get back where you belong****_  


  
  



	2. Here Is No Why

**Disclaimer:** Everworld and its characters belong to K. A. Applegate; Tyrus Kaledon and the Okami are mine and I love them with all my heart and soul. :D Please don't kill me, Ty-Ty... Story and chapter titles are from the Smashing Pumpkins (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness).  
  
**Author's Note:**   


  


**Where Boys Fear to Tread**  
Jessica "Jei" Lee  
  
  
**Chapter Two : Here Is No Why  
**_the useless drag of another day  
desperate and displeased--with whoever you are  
to forgotten faces and faded lovers  
sitting still was never enough  
lost inside the dreams, of teen machines_

  


  
( Christopher )  
  
The Norse gods have fallen. That's the first thing you should know. In the year since we--that is, David, Jalil, April, and I--faded completely from the real world, all of our immortal Viking buddies have toppled like dominoes. First Thor, then Baldur, then Odin. All of our best hopes for victory against the cannibal Ka Anor, lost. Loki ran off with his tail between his legs and he's been MIA since. That's the first thing.  
  
The second thing you should know is, as Jalil would put it, a pretty direct result of the first:   
  
We're screwed.  
  
  
  
So there we were, our little band of war heroes, sitting around a makeshift table of boards nailed together and balanced on two empty barrels in the basement of an inn, our temporary headquarters until we made it to Merlin's secret castle. We were currently discussing what we were going to do and oh, yeah, the details on how incredibly screwed we were. Along with the original fearsome foursome was Merlin himself, the elf queen Goewynne, Etain, and King Baldwin. It still hurt something inside me to see the two of them together. What made it slightly better--or slightly worse, depending on how you look at it--was that Etain actually looked almost happy with him. But whatever. It's been over a year, I'm a big boy, I can handle it.   
  
I am so, _so_ over her.  
  
But THERE WE WERE, none of us without a few new scars, squatting in some hole in the ground because practically the whole world was against us. Apparently, while we were bravely campaigning against Ka Anor and/or the Sennites, Ka Anor-and-the-Sennites had been campaigning against us. They'd been recruiting the continent, if you can call it that: it was basically a join-us-or-we'll-paint-the-walls-with-a-new-coating-of-brain-matter kind of deal.  
  
"So this is what's going to happen," David reiterated for the millionth time, as if repeating it enough times would make it sound more appealing. "We wait here until Goewynne's elf guards arrive so they can protect us on our way to Merlin's hideout. Once there, we rest, recuperate, regroup. And then... And then... And then, when we're all rested up, we'll formulate our next plan of attack."  
  
"Great," I muttered, dropping my head in my hands. "Our plan of attack is to come up with a plan of attack. Sheer genius."  
  
"Do you have a better idea?!" he snapped. General Davideus was getting a little frayed around the edges. The pressure getting to him, and we could all see it happening. Tick, tock, tick, tock.  
  
"What I don't understand, Merlin," Etain interjected smoothly, drawing the conversation away from a possible argument, "is what manner of a secret keep you could have that has remained so well hidden from the rest of the world."  
  
"Ah," said Merlin, looking ever so slightly pleased with himself. "The castle is in the clouds." Most of us stared blankly at him for a second, then got used to the idea. Flying castles, hey, why not? We've seen weirder things. Welcome to Everworld.  
  
"We'll have to get down to some serious recruiting, ourselves," David was muttering. "Manpower. Manpower is key, now. And weapons. And..."  
  
"Say," I said brightly. "Do you think there's a Devil in Everworld? I mean the real McCoy: a cloven-hoofed, pitchfork-carrying, soul-stealing Satan? I bet we could get _him_ to lend a helping hand, what with eight perfectly healthy souls in the deal. He should find the offer hard to resist."  
  
April frowned at me. Even after a year she was still clinging to her goody-two-shoes Christian girl morals. Then something happened that caught all of our attention if only because it was so glaringly subtle. Goewynne gave Merlin a Look. Not just a look-with-a-little-"L," not some twitch of the eye, but a hard and heavy, I'm-passing-telepathic-messages-to-you kind of Significant Glance. Not only that, but Merlin seemed to mull something over before raising his bushy old-man eyebrows at Etain, who paled and turned to Baldwin.  
  
"No," the dwarf king snapped immediately. "Absolutely not."  
  
"What?" Jalil asked almost at the same time. "What is it?"  
  
"We grow desperate, Baldwin," Goewynne said evenly, quite gracefully ignoring Jalil.   
The dwarf stood and started to pace, not a good sign. Whatever the hell they were talking about was unsettling even him, usually a solid rock in the storm. "We cannot choose between two evils. If we enlist one to destroy the other, the one left standing will only take its place."  
  
"The choice is clear," Merlin said. "For it is not the greater evil that we must decide, but which of the two is harming us more. The Okami Wolf has lain dormant for a time, but Ka Anor is even now devouring this world."  
  
April looked at me. I shrugged. Like I'd know what was going on.   
  
"It is madness to even approach an Okami stronghold," Baldwin said heatedly.   
Etain reached over and touched his arm, triggering a twinge of jealousy inside me that I hastily tried to squash. She was beyond my reach now, no matter how much I wanted her. "The Okami do not murder in cold blood on their own grounds; it is one of their firmest laws." She smiled when Baldwin looked at her, clearly surprised. "I have made a careful study of them."  
  
"All right, does anybody feel like telling us what this Okami business is all about?" The Mighty David has spoken, his patience gone.   
  
They looked up, startled, as though they'd forgotten we were here. Etain had the good grace to look embarrassed. "Of course. I apologize. Okam is a way of life that some individuals have chosen for themselves. Those who follow that path, the Okami, are assassins who believe that what they do is for the greater good of the people. Their main goal is to allow the human species to progress without hindrance until it achieves the highest level of social evolution. In order to do this, the Okami... remove those who they believe are detrimental to this progress, or do not have anything to offer it."  
  
"In other words," Jalil said blandly, "they kill whoever gets in their way or doesn't have any value to them."  
  
"To everyone," Etain corrected softly. "And yes, that is essentially it."  
  
"I guess that means they'll be coming after you next, Christopher," April quipped. I let it slide.  
  
David stirred. "I don't get it. How could they help us? Even if they are assassins, the Sennites have guns, and Ka Anor..."  
  
"...Could chew them up and crap them out," I finished for him.   
  
"Ah," Etain said very quietly, "but there is one among them who has a different belief. One who thinks that before the Okami busy themselves with ending human lives, they should first turn their attention to the gods who meddle in them. He is the one man that even the Okami, who everyone fears, see as the stuff of nightmares. They call him the Okami Wolf." Her voice had dropped to a whisper, as if she were afraid that even speaking his name would summon him here. "They call him Tyrus Kaledon, the Slayer of the Gods."  
  
Baldwin shifted uneasily in his seat, then made the Sign against Evil. A moment passed before Goewynne followed suit. David, April, Jalil and I exchanged looks.  
  
April cleared her throat. "Um. Has he actually _slain_ any gods?"  
  
Merlin smiled tightly, his dark eyes unreadable. "Three."  
  
She exhaled slowly. "Oh."  
  
"Wait," Jalil said. "If this guy wants the gods dead, and Ka Anor is eating the gods, why would he want to help us stop him?"  
  
"That is where we will have to manipulate things carefully," Goewynne said, "and pit his sense of duty against his desire to accomplish what no other has: to kill the thing that can kill immortals."  
  
"An appeal to his sense of pride?" April grinned. "If he's a man, it'll work."  
  
"Sexist piglet," I whispered. Her grin only widened.   
  
David drummed his fingers against the table, head down, deep in thought. "All right, this is how we're going to do it."  
  
"I love it when he gets all businesslike and bossy," I said to no one in particular. No one in particular replied. We had all gotten used to David's General Davideus mode.  
  
"Queen Goewynne, Baldwin, and April will go to Merlin's castle. Merlin will have to go with them, of course, to show them the way and how to get in. They can plan further, try to contact any other potential allies, prepare the castle for war. Jalil, Christopher, and I will go to the assassin stronghold with Etain, who seems to know the most about them, and try to recruit this Okami Wolf to our cause."  
  
The response was instantaneous and loud.  
  
"You would take my wife into the very heart of the serpent's nest?" Baldwin roared.  
  
At the same time I whined, "Assassins? I have to go have tea with people who kill other people for a living? You're kidding, right?"  
  
And April piped up with: "You are not putting me out of harm's way again, David. I'm going in there with you guys."  
  
We all looked at each other, then laughed almost until we cried.  
  
"What?" David kept demanding, staring at us like we'd gone crazy. Who knows, maybe we had. "What is so funny?"  
  
As usual, Jalil was the one to restore order and put a logical light on things. "King Baldwin, what David says is true: we require Etain's expertise on these people in order to interact with them. It wouldn't be smart to risk making a fatal _faux pas_ when we could have prevented it. I think we should exchange April with me, as I'd really like to take a look at this levitating castle of Merlin's."  
  
"I want to see the float castle, too." That would be me, of course, the one in the corner with the spine made of jelly. I'm a coward; I'll admit it. My first priority is to keep number one alive and healthy, and waltzing right into an assassin hideout doesn't exactly strike me as the best way to do that. But of course, I was once again ignored.   
  
So it was set. Four of us would be merrily jaunting off to the comfort and safety of Merlin's happy house in the sky while the other four would be traipsing into the jaws of death. Pwease, Mista Cold-Blooded Killer Man, will you help us save the world?  
  
Yeah. Peachy.   
  
  
  



End file.
